


to let it subside

by aetherae



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drama, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, M/M, take that as you will!, we're canon compliant and on cf sooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26910259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetherae/pseuds/aetherae
Summary: Against his better judgment, Claude believes a lie.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 18
Kudos: 62





	to let it subside

**Author's Note:**

> you've heard of "dmcl torn apart by dimitri's death in vw," so now i give you "dmcl torn apart by dimitri's death in cf." love me a ship where 75% of the time it can't even work out because one member of the ship is too dead to be part of it!
> 
> this sounds like a joke but despite what my other dmcl fic may lead you to believe, i LIVE for that sweet, sweet pain of two people desperately in love yet insurmountably separated by the crushing weight of death. IF YOU'RE IN FOR THAT RIDE TOO, WELL.... i hope you enjoy!
> 
> (title taken from 'coffee' by yuna which i always saw as a rather sweet love song, but if i'm using it for something like this........ maybe not LMFAO)

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, crown prince of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, is not a liar.

At least, Claude doesn’t think so. Even without his keen eye, even without a lifetime carved by watching and waiting and surviving in the spaces in between, he would believe this. Too earnest, too honest, too sincere by half, Dimitri does not wear deception well. He fumbles and hesitates, straightforward when he’d be better off evading, and the few times he tries to attempt lying, all Claude has to do is raise an eyebrow before Dimitri gives up with a sigh and inelegantly tries to change the topic.

It’s cute, cuter than it has any right to be, really, so Claude lets him every time. The truth runs as close to Dimitri’s bones as his own blood, and for someone like Claude—well, it’s more appealing than he would rather admit.

_You’re amazing_ , Dimitri tells him at the feast after Gronder, not just in praise of Claude’s tactics on the battlefield—never mind that they both lost to Edelgard’s might combined with Teach’s unpredictable plans—but for his suggestion of the feast, for the way it breaks down the walls between status, nationality, faith. He watches their classmates converse and celebrate as if they all won together with a smile, and when he turns it on Claude, unguarded and warm as it is, Claude believes him.

_You’re ridiculous_ , Dimitri says with a decidedly un-princely roll of his eyes and a scoff after a hare-brained scheme gone awry, resulting in both of them thrown off their horses in what was supposed to be a leisurely ride. Claude only offers his cheekiest grin in turn, and the way it makes that carefully restrained prince laugh—bright and unfettered, boyish in its pure delight—maybe it’s not the highest compliment Claude’s ever received, but for Dimitri, for that laugh, he believes him.

_You're wonderful_ , Dimitri confesses in the privacy of his room, cheeks flushed and lips only half a breath apart from his, and Claude—Claude who has never had someone like him so _much_ , so _genuinely_ , but has always, always wanted it—believes him. He believes it with all his heart before he can think better of it and shows it in another press of their lips together.

So if asked, he doesn’t think he could be faulted for continuing to believe this. That Dimitri is not a liar, that his word is as good as an oath, that he would never promise something he couldn’t fulfill. 

Even when Garreg Mach falls to pieces all around them, Edelgard’s army and Teach— _Byleth_ , he should say—having paved her bloody way. Even when Rhea grits out through gnashed teeth the call for a retreat, the fury in her eyes recognizable now that she isn’t raging fire as a _dragon_. Even when Dimitri with the same violent vengeance in his eyes, drenched in blood and viscera and who knows what else, only falls back at Dedue’s urging, nearly dragged away as he rages for Edelgard’s head. 

Any student not part of the Imperial army rushes to evacuate, split between the Kingdom and the Alliance, and there’s no time for a goodbye, not when they’re two leaders on the cusp of declaring war for their countries. All they have time for is a split second cutting through the chaos, their gazes finding each other for one too long, too brief moment.

In that moment, the anger fades, just a little. In that moment, Claude sees a fraction of the boy he thought he knew. In that moment, it’s enough. It has to be.

“We’ll meet again,” Dimitri says, and Dimitri is no liar. That’s what Claude tells himself as that split second passes and the prince is lost amongst the crowd of Kingdom students, the rush of Seiros knights who find they must make good on a long-standing promise with a soon-to-be king. Faerghus has obligations; Leicester does not. There’s no telling if they’ll ever meet again.

But Dimitri is not a liar, so Claude believes him.

Even when the war rages on across the continent. Even when the Alliance hangs together by a mere thread of negotiations and politicking, Claude acting as the glue to something he knows is tearing apart at the seams. Even when news of the northern front of the war reaches Alliance lands, the inhuman ways in which both Rhea and Dimitri spill every drop of Imperial blood that they can. Even when negotiations between Faerghus and Leicester fail and no agreement can be made for the two to face Adrestia as comrades-in-arms.

They call Dimitri the Tempest King now, as merciless and unfeeling for the destruction left in his wake on the battlefield as a thundering storm, a raging fire, a drowning flood. To cross blades with him is to have the same misfortune of being caught in a natural disaster, rather than to simply fight a man. Claude sees hints of it in him over the hours, the days of discussions, sees how Rhea feeds the flames of his single-minded obsession for Edelgard’s bloody head on a pike with her own, how ready she is to raze the Empire to the ground if it means ending Edelgard’s and Byleth’s lives both, never mind that no one knows whether the former professor even lives.

And Claude can find no fault in the roundtable’s decision against allying with the Kingdom, can’t bring himself to disagree even with acting as mediator, no matter how much he wishes to end this war. The future of Fódlan cannot be left in the hands of the Church of Seiros, not with Faerghus backing them, not with the way they are.

But when Dimitri finds him later, the ghost of his breath against Claude’s lips just as warm as he remembers, Dimitri’s hands more calloused but even softer than how Claude dreams of, he allows himself to set aside their mantles as leaders and hope. Like this, Claude only sees the earnest, too sincere gaze of the boy he knew, and he thinks no matter how much Dimitri’s anger and hatred may consume him, those things live alongside the kindness that runs bone-deep in him. He thinks of how fiercely Dimitri has protected his people and allies, how that ferocity comes not from fury but agonizing compassion, how Dimitri’s touch remains gentle no matter how much blood stains his hands. These are the things that Claude trusts, and Dimitri has yet to prove that trust is misplaced.

“We’ll meet again,” Dimitri says once more, and Dimitri is no liar. That’s what Claude tells himself again as despite the odds, Dimitri made good on his promise. If he did it before, he can do it one more time.

Dimitri is not a liar, so Claude believes him.

Even when news spreads of Byleth’s miraculous survival and return. Even when the Imperial army presses ever closer after years of a stalemate: Myrddin taken, Judith fallen, the Empire’s eyes set on Derdriu and then Faerghus surely after. Even when Edelgard holds Aymr poised to cleave his head from his body, stopped only when Byleth stays the Emperor’s hand. Even when Claude sets sail for Almyra with nothing to show for his time in Fódlan but fallen friends, broken dreams, knowing that from now on, it will be too dangerous for Claude von Riegan to ever step back into his home of more than half a decade. 

Claude says goodbye to his failure, but he says goodbye with the hope of a promise all the while. He says goodbye believing from the bottom of his heart that Dimitri will fulfill his promise one more time because even if Claude couldn’t put a stop to Edelgard’s ambitions, Dimitri is different. Dimitri is stronger, Rhea fights alongside him—and for one single moment, he’s grateful for the unrelenting strength of their sheer hatred, surely enough to keep them fighting through anything—and if this battle has shown anything, it’s that Byleth is merciful where Edelgard is not.

It’s enough. Claude leaves Fódlan behind, leaves _Dimitri_ behind, because it has to be. 

But in the polished marble halls of his childhood home, hundreds of miles away from Fódlan and war and all the bloodshed, helpless to do _anything_ —Claude learns the truth.

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, is a liar.

“You really had me going for a while there,” Claude tells him years later—tells a monument erected on the now green and lush Tailtean Plains, platitudes of the bravery on both sides etched into the stone. It’s smart, the sort of thing to smooth over the resentment of a people conquered and with no one else to turn to, not with their king gone and their capital burnt to ashes. A step forward into a brighter future for a United Fódlan. 

Claude hates it more with every second he spends looking at it.

It will always be too dangerous for Claude von Riegan, Leader of the former Leicester Alliance, to step foot in his home of more than half a decade, but for King Khalid of Almyra, it’s only natural to cross that border, to see how Almyra’s old enemy rebuilds after years of war when Fódlan seeks to finally make peace with its neighbors. 

“They sent me a letter, did you know that? Well, Edelgard did. Personally written and everything, too. She said she was surprised I managed to lie about my identity the whole time,” Claude says with a smile, too sharp and too bitter as he remembers a different letter instead. The letter, written in the impersonal and dispassionate hand of a mere report, read that King Dimitri fell at these very plains, his body nearly cleaved in half by Edelgard’s relic. Their old professor’s mercy was nowhere to be found for Dimitri, yet here Claude stands, ready to make peace with them anyways for Almyra’s sake. After all these years, he can make his dreams a reality with his own two hands. He knows better than to ruin that with a personal grudge, not when the future of two countries weighs on the choices he makes here.

It makes him sick.

_We’ll meet again_ , Dimitri told him, promised him, yet the only place Claude can hope to meet him now is in his sleep, in dreams that will never come true. A promise that will remain unfulfilled until the day he dies.

“I don’t know though.” He tries to laugh—and sobs instead, voice thick even to his own ears. His vision blurs, the hot sting of tears slipping down his cheeks impossible to stop as he drags in a ragged breath, but Claude can’t bring himself to care. He was tired of looking at this ugly monument anyways. 

“I kinda feel like the biggest liar here is you.”

**Author's Note:**

> real talk why DOESN'T the alliance work with the kingdom in cf?? dimitri's actually around AND sane for it, so if there was ever a time they could combine their might to push back the empire.........


End file.
